They made it happen with deftly drafted legislation, polished persuasive skills and continued adherence to the principle that the common good always trumps partisan politics.

It was the same successful formula that these veteran legislators have used to produce a string of impressive accomplishments for Staten Island.

Looking back on the long, arduous battle that was won last Friday, it is clear that the Department of Education (DOE) never had a valid reason for its decision, made two years ago, to terminate the variance that had allowed Staten Island’s middle school kids to ride yellow buses since 1968.

For at least six months, the agency cited only budgetary considerations.

When that argument began to unravel during a hearing before Supreme Court Justice John Fusco, DOE witnesses started speaking in general terms about the variance being unfair to students in the rest of the city.

Those initial references to an alleged inequity later crystallized into a specific claim that the variance violated the “like circumstances” clause of the state Education Law.

That part of the statute requires school districts to provide equal transportation benefits to all students in like circumstances.

To every knowledgeable observer except Mayor Bloomberg and DOE officials, there were two obvious problems with the “like circumstances” argument.

First, that clause was in the Education Law at the time the variance was originally enacted. Was the DOE conceding, therefore, that it had wilfully violated state law for 42 years?

Second, Staten Island’s middle-school students face daily commutes that are decidedly unlike those of their counterparts in the rest of the city. Schools here are farther apart, public transportation options are sketchier, and there are seemingly endless streets without sidewalks.

When the DOE nevertheless stubbornly clung to its contention, Cusick and Lanza swung into action.

DIFFICULT TASK

Their task was not an easy one: Draft legislation broad enough to exempt all of Staten Island’s middle-school kids from the “like circumstances” clause, but narrow enough to dissuade the city from marshalling its considerable political muscle in the Assembly to defeat it.

The language they finally settled upon met both objectives, and the Cusick-Lanza bill was signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in June.

Now backed into a corner, schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott had little practical choice but to salute the two legislators for their bipartisan initiative and announce that middle-school kids here would be allowed to ride the yellow buses once again.

In August, however, the DOE decreed that seventh- and eighth-grade students at the Staten Island School of Civic Leadership and the Marsh Avenue Expeditionary Learning School would be excluded from bus service.

Walcott sought to justify the action by claiming that the Cusick-Lanza bill only applied to those students attending schools from which yellow bus service was provided during the 2009-2010 school year.

The two legislators were understandably outraged at what, by every principle of statutory construction, was an absurd claim.

Still, they wisely ignored ill-advised calls for them to try to satiate the DOE by amending the statute. Instead, secure in their belief that the law as written did indeed apply to all Staten Island middle school kids, they sought and received an opinion to that effect from the New York State Department of Education.

When Bloomberg and Walcott still refused to budge, Cusick and Lanza, drawing on their skills as experienced legislators, pressed them behind the scenes with the law, the facts, and a commitment to the cause that was both obvious and unyielding.

On Friday, that strategy reaped huge rewards for Staten Island with the DOE’s announcement that yellow bus service would once again be available to all middle school students here.

Bringing the school bus saga to a successful conclusion is the latest of three major bipartisan achievements for Cusick and Lanza this year alone.

Their initiative, the first of its kind in the nation, requires physicians to consult the real-time registry before dispensing designated medicines, and pharmacies to update the registry when dispensing them. The measure garnered the enthusiastic support of Gov. Cuomo.

Cusick and Lanza were also the prime movers in a successful effort to provide meaningful toll relief for Staten Island’s residential E-ZPass holders who use Port Authority crossings. In announcing that tolls were being rolled back to their lowest peak rate in 10 years, Cuomo praised the two legislators for being “tenacious” in their determination to get it done.

Michael Cusick, a centrist Democrat, and Andrew Lanza, a Republican, have proven time and again how much can be accomplished when issues important to a community are addressed by conscientious legislators with a bipartisan perspective.

Now Staten Island’s middle-school students know that too.

[Daniel Leddy’s column appears each Tuesday on the Advance Editorial Page. His e-mail address is JudgeLeddy@si.rr.com.]